In the present cellular telephone environment cellular telephone users can subscribe to multiple message services. For example, a first cellular telephone user may subscribe to voice telephony service. A second cellular telephone user may subscribe to e-mail service in addition to voice telephony service. The second user thus would be able to send and to receive both telephone calls and e-mails through her cellular telephone handset. A third user may subscribe to voice telephony service and an instant messaging service. In such a situation where users of a wireless telecommunications network regularly communicate with a large number of contacts using a wide range of telecommunication services, it may become difficult or impossible for a user of the wireless telecommunications network to remember exactly what types of messages that can be sent to other users of the wireless telecommunications network.
This can have negative consequences, limiting the benefit of other types of messaging services when compared to basic telephony service. For example, a user may send messages to another user of the wireless telecommunications network not remembering whether the contact can even receive the type of message being sent. This can result in situations where the other user never even receives the message.
In another situation, a user may continually choose to use voice telephony service knowing that other users of the wireless telecommunications network can receive telephone calls. The user may decline to use a service that is particularly suited to an environment or context such as, for example, text messaging, because the user is not sure whether the contact can receive a text message. In such a situation, the user may decline to send a message at all, knowing that in particular environments it would be inappropriate (or even prohibited) to initiate a telephone call.
Thus, those skilled in the art desire improved functionality for tracking what types of messages other users of a wireless telephony system can receive. In the ideal situation, such functionality would be added to pre-existing related functionality of the cellular telephone, for example, a contact list, to improve the usefulness of such functionality.
In addition, assuming the existence of such improved functionality, those skilled in the art would also desire methods and apparatus to update information concerning the types of messages that other users of the wireless telecommunications network can receive. For example, those skilled in the art desire a simple way for updating contact list information with new information concerning the types of messages that other users of the wireless telecommunications network can receive. In order to make updating activity as simple as possible, it would be desirable that such a system be automated.